Thursday, August 9, 2012

ACKs At the Mythos Session 4: Aria Sings Her Last

Here is an actual play report from the most recent game at Modern Myths in Northampton, MA on Tuesday August, 7th.

Characters:

Aria- 1st level Bladedancer with her henchmen Gax and Rothdred
Konrad- a wry 1st level Mage with his henchman Meddric
Kiri- 1st level shaman with her wolf and a henchman named Grub

Kiri and Aria had been to the Barrowmaze in their previous adventure and were nursing Kiri's poor wounded wolf cub in the crappy border town of Helix. Aria was able to make a little money to keep them fed from singing in the tavern and doing her blade dance for the amusement of the animal handlers from the caravans. The pup's eye healed up and the party had rested. A new guy in town, running from the political purges in Zarbala happened to be a mage named Konrad. Having no other prospects and looking for some coin, Konrad agreed to join Aria and Kiri on their next voyage into the Barrowmaze.

Feeling that the Barrowmaze's monsters were beyond their ability to fend off, the party decided to hire some henchmen. The party spent some coin in town to get the word out and this resulted in four who were willing to travel into the moors. The party successfully hired the four of them. All were poorly armed and armored excepting the very large village idiot Grub. He had somehow come into the ownership of a suit of mail and a shield. Konrad the Elementalist gave very specific instructions to his henchman Meddric. Meddric was to protect Konrad at all costs, including his own life, and paid Meddric an extra two gold a week plus a 2 gold bonus for every undead Meddric could destroy.

Early the next morning, the party trekked overland to the entrance of the Barrowmaze and descended without a problem. They checked one of the rooms that they had already explored and then turned up a northerly route they had not yet explored. Stopping at the door of a room, the party checked for traps and found none. Successfully opening the door, Aria and Grub stepped through and set off a trap that caused a large stone door to slide down and separate them from the rest of the party. Immediately following that, seven skeletons came in from an adjacent room and slew Aria and Grub. The rest of the party, unable to discern what was going on beyond the stone door had to turn around. There was no way to open the door because Aria had the party's pry bar.

Trying to find a passage that went around in order to rescue their friends, the party went up another passage heading in the same general direction. The passage did not lead them to Aria and Grub, but to a dusty hallway with three different crypts and another room with a portcullis blocking entry. The first room held some skeletal remains and some ominous graffiti telling the reader to beware the tentacle beast. The second room had a locked door. The door to the third room was smashed in and the skeletal remains of a man were laying on a slab. Upon entering the room and checking out the corpse, Gax the former henchman and now PC saw some form of incorporeal undead, dropped his hand ax and ran for it. Kiri felt it was important to retrieve the ax because they needed it to bash down the second door. She too fled the fearful creature. Konrad attempted to grab the ax and dash out again and was successful. The party decided that they needed to check out the second door and since their attempts to force it open were unsuccessful, decided that Gax should bash it down with his axe.

Two turns later, the door was down and a very surprised spider dropped from the ceiling of the room to be bashed into paste by Gax. The party found a small pile of electrum coins and went back to the door to see if Aria or her corpse could be recovered. Sadly the party had only one tool that could have opened the door and it was on Aria's corpse. Hearing from scuttling from further down the hall behind them. Konrad and his henchman Meddric (whom he called Metric) saw a group of fire beetles that weren't particularly interested in the party. With time running out, the party decided to return to Helix to end the session.

1 comment:

You know, depending on her CON, how far below zero she is, and the sort of magic/healing used to revive her, there's still the slimmest of chances that the Bladedancer might make it out of there alive-ish if you went back for her.